Arch Linux

amunimanghi

Member

Registered: 2006-11-21

Posts: 78

Setup wireless card during bootup

Hey,

It took my awhile to get my wireless card to work but I finally got it to work. In the beginning, I had to type every command to get my wireless card to work. A little later my friend made a script that runs during start up. But it encountered a problem. When the command ''dhcpcd ath0" it would just hang so I took that out. It ran fine but now I have to run "dhcpcd ath0", let it run for 4 or 5 seconds, then kill it with ctrl + c, and then finally run it again. My connection is then established. So this gets a little annoying.
Now I come to you, the community. What is the best way to setup a wireless card during boot-up? My friend (yes, its the same one as before ) said that there was a wireless script or profile that most people use. Would this help? Thanks.

Asaru

Member

Registered: 2006-05-06

Posts: 14

Re: Setup wireless card during bootup

i use the network-profiles for this
and have set the NET_PROFILES to menu so i can choose what to use at start..

have a look at /etc/network-profiles/

hth
Asaru

amunimanghi

Member

Registered: 2006-11-21

Posts: 78

Re: Setup wireless card during bootup

i use the network-profiles for this
and have set the NET_PROFILES to menu so i can choose what to use at start..

have a look at /etc/network-profiles/

hth
Asaru

Can you emphasize, I'm still new to editing files in /etc.

arew264

Member

From: Friendswood, Texas, US

Registered: 2006-07-01

Posts: 394

Website

Re: Setup wireless card during bootup

I assume you meant elaborate

The first and most recommended way of doing this is through rc.conf, which has lines that allow you to set up a network adapter quite simply.

However, this file does not allow you, to my knowledge, to set up a wireless card with the essid and any encryption. Even if it did, your system would be trying to set up your wireless card every boot, and if this is a laptop that may not be in range of your network sometimes, your system would be trying to set up a card on a network that wasn't there. I don't know what exactly would result there, but I'd rather not worry about it.

The method Asaru mentioned is to set up a network profile in /etc/network-profiles/. There is a decent wiki article about this, I believe, so try searching there (wiki.archlinux.org) for network profiles. This seems to be the method of choice for setting up a network card on boot, and simply allows you to specify any settings you want to apply to it, and even set up a menu that will display on boot asking which network profile you want to use, which would be handy with a laptop because you could create a profile that does nothing in case you aren't going to connect to a wireless network.

I do not have a wireless card in use under linux nor do I have any experience with wireless under Arch, so if I am incorrect anywhere above I would ask that someone with more experience here would correct me.

amunimanghi

Member

Registered: 2006-11-21

Posts: 78

Re: Setup wireless card during bootup

Ok, I went ahead and looked at the wiki. One thing lead to another and I found a patch made by ____. Here's the link. http://iphitus.loudas.com/arch/network/ … oved.patch

Do I need to edit this? If so, what do I need to edit inside of it? Elaborate when needed. ;-)

EDIT: I took a quick look at it and already I don't know what $IWOPTS means.

iphitus

Forum Fellow

From: Melbourne, Australia

Registered: 2004-10-09

Posts: 4,927

Re: Setup wireless card during bootup

that patch was applied a long time ago. Please follow Asaru's suggestion of using /etc/network-profiles

Try copying the default/example, and modifying it. READ what the fields do, many such as IWOPTS are optional.

James

amunimanghi

Member

Registered: 2006-11-21

Posts: 78

Re: Setup wireless card during bootup

#
# Network Profile
#

DESCRIPTION="Default Network Profile"

# Network Settings
INTERFACE=ath0
HOSTNAME=manghi

# Interface Settings (use IFOPTS="dhcp" for DHCP)
IFOPTS="dhcp"
GATEWAY=192.168.0.1

# DNS Settings (optional)
DOMAIN=localdomain
DNS1=192.168.0.1
DNS2=

# Wireless Settings (optional)
ESSID=FMang
KEY=**********(inputed key)
#IWOPTS="mode managed essid FMang channel 6 key restricted A16B61B296"

WIFI_INTERFACE=wlan0   # use this if you have a special wireless interface
                        # that is linked to the real $INTERFACE

WIFI_WAIT=5            # seconds to wait for the wireless card to
                        # associate before bringing the interface up
#USEWPA="yes"           # start wpa_supplicant with the profile
#WPAOPTS=""             # use "" for normal operation or specify 
additional
                        # options (eg, "-D ipw")
                        # see /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf for configuration
#AUTOWPA="yes"          # automatically configure WPA
#PASSKEY=""             # wpa passkey/phrase. for use with AUTOWPA

Is this correct?

Lone_Wolf

Administrator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 14,962

Re: Setup wireless card during bootup

#
# Network Profile
#

DESCRIPTION="Default Network Profile"

# Network Settings
INTERFACE=ath0
HOSTNAME=manghi

# Interface Settings (use IFOPTS="dhcp" for DHCP)
IFOPTS="dhcp"
GATEWAY=192.168.0.1

# DNS Settings (optional)
DOMAIN=localdomain
DNS1=192.168.0.1
DNS2=

# Wireless Settings (optional)
ESSID=FMang
KEY=**********(inputed key)
#IWOPTS="mode managed essid FMang channel 6 key restricted A16B61B296"

WIFI_INTERFACE=wlan0   # use this if you have a special wireless interface
                        # that is linked to the real $INTERFACE

WIFI_WAIT=5            # seconds to wait for the wireless card to
                        # associate before bringing the interface up
#USEWPA="yes"           # start wpa_supplicant with the profile
#WPAOPTS=""             # use "" for normal operation or specify 
additional
                        # options (eg, "-D ipw")
                        # see /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf for configuration
#AUTOWPA="yes"          # automatically configure WPA
#PASSKEY=""             # wpa passkey/phrase. for use with AUTOWPA

Is this correct?

Not entirely.

Comment everything in the DNS section , it's not used with dhcp and could cause conflicts

In wireless settings

- uncomment the line for IFOPTS

- comment the line WIFI_INTERFACE (iirc it's only needed with ndiswrapper)

Change the DESCRIPTION field to something appropriate like "Wlan at home"

---

Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

clean chroot building not flexible enough ?
Try clean chroot manager by graysky

iphitus

Forum Fellow

From: Melbourne, Australia

Registered: 2004-10-09

Posts: 4,927

Re: Setup wireless card during bootup

- uncomment the line for IFOPTS

No need, the script uses a sane default when IWOPTS isnt defined in the config.

amunimanghi

Member

Registered: 2006-11-21

Posts: 78

Re: Setup wireless card during bootup

Ok, now that it is all configured, how would I get this to run at start-up?

Asaru

Member

Registered: 2006-05-06

Posts: 14

Re: Setup wireless card during bootup

look in your rc.conf for network-profile.
you need to change this to "menu" (if you want the menu to choose) or just name the profile there (havent used this yet.. i think its the filename)

manmower

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2006-11-17

Posts: 100

Re: Setup wireless card during bootup

look in your rc.conf for network-profile.
you need to change this to "menu" (if you want the menu to choose) or just name the profile there (havent used this yet.. i think its the filename)

Yep, just use the name of your profile if you don't need to choose while booting.

Then you can

/etc/rc.d/network restart

as super-user to see if it connects without having to reboot.

Asaru

Member

Registered: 2006-05-06

Posts: 14

Re: Setup wireless card during bootup

or try with

netcfg --menu

as root to test the configs

amunimanghi

Member

Registered: 2006-11-21

Posts: 78

Re: Setup wireless card during bootup

Thanks for everyones help. It works now automatically on startup.